Why Your Cardamom Stopped Smelling (and How to Avoid It)

Cardamom loses its smell faster than most spices because the aroma sits in oils that evaporate on their own, and cracking the pod, warmth, light and damp all speed that up. A pod that's already old when you buy it never had much aroma to begin with. Below is what is going on, and how to slow it down.

Where the smell actually comes from

Cardamom's aroma lives in aromatic oils inside the seeds. These oils are volatile, meaning they turn to vapour at ordinary room temperature. It's the same reason a cracked pod smells strong the second you break it open, and the same reason that smell doesn't stay.

What speeds up the fade

Grinding or cracking too early

The husk is doing a job: keeping the oils in. Once it's cracked or ground, they escape fast. Cardamom powder can go nearly flat within a few weeks.

Air

A loose lid or a half-sealed pouch lets aroma out and lets oxygen in, and oxygen changes those oils in ways that flatten the smell further.

Heat

Warmth pushes evaporation along. The shelf above the stove is about the worst place in the kitchen to keep any spice jar, cardamom especially.

Light

Sun fades both the green colour and the oils underneath it. A clear jar on a sunny windowsill looks nice and does the cardamom no favours.

Moisture

Damp pods risk going mouldy, and Kerala's own monsoon humidity doesn't make storage easy even here.

Age before it reached you

Sometimes the cardamom was tired long before it got to your kitchen, sitting in a warehouse or shop shelf for months. A pack that smells weak on the day you open it usually tells you this.

Keeping cardamom fragrant for longer

• Buy whole pods for storage, never powder.
• Buy an amount you'll actually finish in a few months, not a year's supply.
• Keep it in an airtight glass jar, in a closed cupboard, away from the stove.
• Split a big pack: a small jar for daily use, the rest sealed and out of the light.
• Use a dry spoon, or dry fingers.
• Crack or grind only what today's cooking needs.

Can you get the smell back?

A little. Warming pods in a dry pan for 20 to 30 seconds brings out some of whatever oil is left, which helps for that one dish. It won't undo months of sitting in a warm cupboard, though.

How to check a new pack before you commit to it

Crack one pod as soon as it arrives. Fresh cardamom hits you immediately, and the seeds inside look dark and slightly sticky. If the smell is faint and the seeds look pale and dry, that pack was old stock before it ever reached you.

We pack our Idukki cardamom whole, in resealable pouches, so it isn't sitting open on a shelf before it reaches you. For more on when it's picked, see our post on the August cardamom harvest.